The present disclosure relates identification techniques and, more particularly, to component identification.
Counterfeit products are a large problem faced by producers and consumers of items. The items can be inferior quality and lead to defects in systems into which the items are integrated.
For example, the threat of counterfeit electronics injected into the supply chain supporting the US defense industry is widely appreciated. With the proliferation of capabilities in Advanced Manufacturing (AM) technologies, there is an increasing risk of counterfeit materials into the AM domain as well. According to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Report to the President on Ensuring American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing, Advanced Manufacturing technology is “a family of activities that (a) depend on the use and coordination of information, automation, computation, software, sensing, and networking, and/or (b) make use of cutting edge materials and emerging capabilities enabled by the physical and biological sciences, for example nanotechnology, chemistry, and biology. This involves both new ways to manufacture existing products, and especially the manufacture of new products emerging from new advanced technologic.”
AM technologies includes but is not limited to, for example, additive manufacturing such as 3-D printing and cold spraying. Even in the defense industry, components and parts have been discovered being injected into supply chains supporting defense related products. This threat is real and may arise in the context of electronic components such as microchips and integrated circuits integrated into defense related products. Further, as the capability of counterfeiters increases, will increasingly provide novel, and critical, products beyond the realm of electronics.
Given the criticality that components in the defense industry are authentic, the need for more advanced methods of differentiating between real and counterfeit components is ever increasing. As such, more robust identification systems/methods would be well received.